


took a long time to make it

by blanchtt



Series: i carry your heart with me [1]
Category: Bird Box (2018), Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Crossover, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-07 06:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16402931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blanchtt/pseuds/blanchtt
Summary: She avoids the puddle of blood in the bathroom, lays Danny’s favorite scarf over his face and leaves, leaves without even burying him because something quick that jumps and spooks now in her tells Debbie not to linger.She slips into the garage, into her car, starts it and opens the garage door, and backs out. It feels wrong, to drive with eyes closed. But she’s always been good with directions, always memorized where things are and how to use them.





	took a long time to make it

 

 

 

 

 

Her shoulder hurts and her throat burns and her stomach turns and her head aches with it all and she is filthy and wet and tired and something is following them, little splashes here and there, echoes on the water, almost as if they’re purposefully trying to drive home a final crack in the last of her resolve.

 

But there is Girl and Boy and herself, paddling and listening, and nothing has gotten them yet and that’s better than nothing.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

She avoids the puddle of blood in the bathroom, lays Danny’s favorite scarf over his face and leaves, leaves without even burying him because something quick that jumps and spooks now in her tells Debbie not to linger.

 

She slips into the garage, into her car, starts it and opens the garage door, and backs out.

 

It feels wrong, to drive with eyes closed. But she’s always been good with directions, always memorized where things are and how to use them.

 

“Fifteen minutes,” Debbie tells herself out loud, bumps into something else, something big that feels like another car, maybe Danny’s SUV, and grunts and throws the car into reverse, backs off a bit and puts it back in drive and keeps going. “Turn left at the end of the driveway. Two minutes. We’re past the laundromat. Turn left again, four minutes, until the bar, then take the right. There’s a slope, that’s good. We’re on the right track. Seven minutes on the road up the hill, and another left at Shellingham. Two seventy-three Shillingham Lane. Two seventy-three Shillingham Lane. Two seventy-three Shillingham Lane.”

 

It takes much more than fifteen minutes, the lack of sight, the constant stops, and the drawn out time disorienting. Debbie peers through the cracks in her hand over her eyes when she has to, knows she has to risk it because she can’t stay at home anymore, and finally, bumping into all manner of things the entire way, she peeks, sees number two sixty-one, closes her eyes and counts and drives until she’s in front of 273, hopefully.

 

She parks, leaves her car in what’s probably the middle of the street and doesn’t care. She grabs her suitcase off the passenger seat, yanks it out of the car, a small one, clothes and cans of things and bottles of water all mixed up inside, slams the door of her car shut and tries to keep her pace even, stumbles over a curb and across a lawn and to the door, eyes closed the whole way.

 

“Hello?” Debbie calls, tries to keep the edge from her voice as she knocks on the door as if this is a regular house call and then beats on it with her fist, again and again. She can imagine the house, despite never having seen it—windows boarded, heavy front door locked, yard empty. Trees to the back of it, in this neighborhood, and then after that the rest of Michigan, suburbia slowly disintegrating into wilderness. “Hello! I read the ad in the paper.”

 

“Have your eyes been closed?” someone asks, muffled from the other side of the door, and Debbie stops pounding, grasps the handle of the door instead, waits for the turn of the lock that means she won’t be left out here, to drive the entire route back home backwards and without looking, to a home that is probably compromised, alone.

 

“Yes! Yes, the whole way over.”

 

It’s more truth than lie, and Debbie waits, heart in her throat, until the door unlocks, until she’s pulled in by several hands, quick, and the door locks behind her.

 

She keeps her eyes closed as she’s frisked, as someone explains quite close to her, “Just to make sure nothing else came in with you,” doesn’t open them until a low accented voice says, “Alright, you can open your eyes, ladies.”

 

Debbie does so, finds herself in the foyer of a decently sized home, lights on, five women and a dog watching her.

 

“I don’t mean any offense,” a woman, short and dark-skinned, says by way of introduction, and Debbie swallows, can feel the skepticism and disapproval in the woman’s voice and knows what the woman’s going to ask before she can even say it. “But are you pregnant?”

 

It comes out smaller and weaker than Debbie knows she usually speaks, very well at the mercy of five people who may decide she’s not worth it, too much trouble, too much liability, and cast her back out.  

 

“Yes.”

 

She’s become used to it, that slow and gradual rounding out of her belly, a secret all her own, to keep safe inside herself, that doesn’t know anything about blacked-out windows and gleaming scissors and broken bodies.  _We’re here_ , she had thought to it, throwing the car in park earlier. _We’re here_ , she and it, safe as she’d been pulled inside, and that was all that mattered, not stupid fucking Claude Becker, presumed dead, not her parents, presumed dead, not her brother, confirmed dead.

 

“Fuck,” the woman says, the word drawn out in exasperation as a hand goes up to her forehead, pressing. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

 

There are no protestations from anyone else, silence sweeping over the other women as they take in that fact, and it’s now or never, Debbie knows. Play up the card she hasn’t pulled since she was seventeen, when she learned there were other, more entertaining methods to get her way.

 

She’s done it so many times she can do it without having to think of some sad thing from the past, a runaway cat never found or her mother’s funeral. She cries like Danny and her dad taught her to, a long time ago—crumples her face, pretends she’s trying not to cry, a shuddering breath, and then lets the tears flow.

 

It works especially well now that she’s pregnant, Debbie notices, because the woman’s angry expression falters and one of the other woman, tall and thin with a motorcycle helmet on indoors, nudges her, says—

 

“Come off it, Amita. You’re going to scare her.”

 

The waterworks are a bit harder to turn off than they should be, Debbie notes, a combination of her pregnancy perhaps and also because once she starts the last four months overwhelm her. But Amita is apologizing and a girl is taking her suitcase and the tall woman is telling her not to worry, and Debbie reaches up with both hands, wipes the tears away, and knows she’s staying.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She comes down the stairs and makes her way to the kitchen, finds a frizzy-haired woman, Rose, she remembers from yesterday’s introductions, and Amita at the breakfast table.

 

She’s conned people out a lot of shit over the years, but she’s never been caught because she knows her limits, knows when to stop pushing buttons altogether. And this—this is different. How do you ask someone for food and shelter and water at times like this, Debbie thinks, when she doesn’t have much to offer back.

 

But there’s no need, because Amita gets up, disappears, and comes back with a can.

 

“Hope you like peaches,” Amita says, much more cheerfully than yesterday as she reaches into a drawer and draws out a mechanical can opener, and Debbie smiles gratefully at her.

 

“Thank you.”

 

She lets Amita spoon them out into a bowl, place a fork in it, and walk back over, take a seat and hand it to her.

 

“So!” Rose says, clasping her hands together and smiling. “Do tell us. Do you know the sex?”

 

“No idea. I took my pregnancy test the day the problem broke out here,” Debbie replies, a forkful of peaches halfway to her mouth, and then in a small, warning wave of nausea, she realizes they’re not a good idea. She puts down her spoon, swallows, knows the next question because she is a pregnant woman alone and adds before anyone asks, “Baby daddy’s not in the picture.”

 

It gets some worried clucking from Rose and some muttering from Amita, but she’s fine with it, really, because it was a stupid mistake, and is almost glad when Lou walks in, grabs a chair and turns it around and straddles it and smiles at her, distracting them all and saving her from any further questions.

 

“Sleep alright?” Lou asks genially, and Debbie nods, pushes away the bowl. Nine Ball, the woman with dreds who Debbie had learned refused to tell anyone her real name, even Lou, had given up her room with its small twin mattress, slept on the couch and let Debbie take the bed.

 

“Yes, thank you.”

 

There’s a beat before Lou crosses her arms, rests them on the back of the chair and leans forward, lazy and purposeful all at once.

 

“We’ve all got chores here,” Lou explains, and ah, this is the price to pay for staying which Debbie hardly minds at all. She’s pregnant, not disabled. “But I could take you on a tour before we get to that part.”

 

Debbie nods, leaves Rose and Amita at the breakfast table with a goodbye she hopes doesn’t sound too hasty because the scent of the peaches still turns her stomach, and follows Lou.

 

The other woman shows her the rest of the house—the living room with its baby grand piano, the foyer she was in last night, the hallways that lead to the rooms and bathrooms. In every room, Debbie notices gratefully, the windows are blacked out, covered in blankets and tape and anything else to keep out even a sliver of light that could be looked through. The electricity still works because of the nearby hydroelectric dam, Debbie guesses, but Lou explains the water doesn’t but there’s a well outside.  

 

Finally, Lou motions back towards the kitchen, which she’s already seen, and then takes her to a door, opens it and says, “This is the cellar.”

 

It’s cool and damp, Debbie notices as she takes the wooden stairs down it, old fashioned, and once on solid ground again she takes a step, realizes the floor is dirt, compact. Lou takes a few steps forward, standing under the light, and Debbie follows her.

 

“Rose usually checks the cans every day,” Lou says, and the way it’s thrown out with the hint of a smile and a look over her shoulder at Debbie makes Debbie realize that Rose’s worries seem almost a touch neurotic to Lou. Lou motions at the rows and rows of shelves they’ve got, all full of cans, and adds, “I do a reconciliation every seven days and keeps tabs on things.”

 

“Looks like a goddam prepper lived here,” Debbie says, and Lou lets out a small snort of laughter.

 

“Yeah. George had his eye on the ball.”

 

“George?”

 

“George posted the ad,” Lou explains, waves a hand in that vague way Debbie knows means _all of this_. “It’s his house.”

 

She hasn’t been introduced to a George and Lou’s taken her all over the house, so he’s not hiding away somewhere, and Debbie doesn’t ask anything else, knows everyone here is grieving for _someone_. Even if Lou wanted to talk, she’s not quite sure she wants to hear. Some of the news reports from before still stick with her, grisly enough to haunt her thoughts when she sleeps.

 

Lou crosses her arms, and her gaze focuses on something far away before she says, “I lost a daughter.”

 

“Oh, God, Lou,” Debbie breathes out, and she is helpless to do anything because the past is the past and Lou is a stranger, really, and so she holds her hand to her throat, unsure of what else to say or do because _I’m sorry_ is so painfully, woefully inadequate.

 

Lou’s head turns just a bit, and then there are sharp eyes that watch her, sizing her up before Lou continues.

 

“Robin’s mother died during childbirth,” Lou says, and with those five little words, a story in themselves, Debbie thinks that’s all she needs to know but learns that it’s not—no, far from it, as Lou continues, and the nausea is back because of her pregnancy and Lou’s story and the smell of the damp earth in the cellar, almost makes her heave, gagging on _everything_ , before Lou mutters a _shit, I’m so sorry_ and hurries her quickly but carefully up the cellar stairs.

 

Fresh air comes at a premium, one she can’t afford to pay, and so Debbie sits at the kitchen table, gratefully empty, and lets Lou make her a mug of tea instead, profusely apologetic even though it’s not her fault, really.

 

“It’s just the hormones,” Debbie says, reaches out with her free hand and lays her hand over Lou’s. “Really.”

 

The tea helps her stomach and Lou’s hand is warm under hers, except where large, cold rings adorn her fingers. Debbie brushes her thumb against the side of Lou’s hand, skates over the knuckle and takes a breath and says, “My brother’s name was Danny.”

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to herself, Lou, Amita, Rose, Constance, and Nine Ball, they open the door one evening—everyone except for herself in some state of buzzed or faded or both, Constance throwing a tennis ball down the hall for Victor to fetch and Nine Ball playing on the baby-grand in the living room to forget the sound of gunshots over the radio—and let in another woman.

 

Debbie watches the procedure, familiar to a tee to the one she went through. Close your eyes. Ask questions. Assess. Vote. Close your eyes. Open the door. Pull her in. Touch. Nothing followed. Wait for Lou’s okay and then open your eyes.

 

It’s a blonde woman with large brown eyes, and suddenly from Debbie’s left Rose’s nagging comments about the number of cans left in the cellar resurface, grumbled under her breath, faint enough not to rile up anyone but there, making themselves known, and Debbie stares along with the others, is the first to speak and asks the woman with indelicate surprise, “Are you pregnant?”

 

It’s obvious enough because Debbie knows personally now the roundness that comes with pregnancy over other sort of weight, and the woman’s thin otherwise and besides she nods a confirmation.

 

“Yes,” the woman replies, almost sheepishly adding, “I heard you. The piano. Normally I’d bring cupcakes along, but, well. You know.”

 

There is a beat of silence, one in which Debbie thinks Lou and Amita and Rose and Constance and Nine Ball may be realizing and understanding and planning now, darkly or in a daze, how in the span of a few days they have suddenly added four more members to the house, eventually.

 

“We’re glad to have you,” Lou says, the first to speak up, and Debbie is grateful for Lou, for Lou extending that kindness to herself and now to this woman who needs it, for quieting Amita that first day. But a part of her, the part she could never silence, the part that worked so well with Danny, hears that and wonders if she’s found a soft spot in Lou.

 

Soft spots are good—apply the right amount or type of pressure, in one way or another, and the mark caves without even knowing it. But now, all of them moving from the foyer to the living room, sitting on couches and the piano bench and Constance sitting on the floor with Victor in her lap, Debbie’s not so sure.

 

The right soft spot and the right pressure and someone might try to walk out the door, no blindfold, and leave it wide open for anything else to make its way inside.

 

“I live a couple houses over. My husband’s in the air force,” the woman says, explains, “I haven’t heard from him in what feels like weeks, so…” She trails off, and everyone knows and there’s no need to say it out loud.

 

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Lou says, hands clasped in front of herself. “And I know this is quick, but I’m sure you understand. Is there anything else in your home that we might be able to use?”

 

“Yes, I think so, if someone else comes back with me to get it,” the woman says, and then, as if it’s the least important thing on her mind, she adds, “I’m Tammy, by the way. Nice to meet you all.”

 

It’s a callback to better times, and they start introductions, each of them introducing themselves, and when Debbie does she has to ask.

 

“How far along are you?”

 

“About four months?” Tammy says, and Debbie laughs a little, the first time in _months_ , because what are the odds, because now she can bitch to Tammy about nausea and heartburn and everything else, because now she doesn’t have to go through this alone.

 

“Same as me,” Debbie replies, a hand fluttering to her stomach, and it’s clear from Tammy’s smile that she’s not the only one who now feels much more at ease.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

 

She’s never camped, never been poor enough to worry about getting enough food to eat, never lived without running water or on rations. It takes getting used to, but going for water and looking over the stock of cans and making sure the house is clean and the black-out drapes are secure takes up all of her day.

 

She falls into a new routine, the same one day in and day out, the only thing not caught suspended in time being the swelling of her belly.

 

Some days she wakes up and can forget it’s all happened. It’s rare, because her nerves are strung tight as piano wire, always thinking _put on your blindfold_ and _check the door_ and _stay away from the windows_ and _George died here_ , unable to relax. Debbie thinks of what the book says, the shared copy of _What To Expect When You're Expecting_ that they bring back among other things from Tammy's house, and knows when she stresses the baby stresses and that’s not good.

 

But there are mornings she wakes up in Lou’s bed, Lou sleeping facing her and curled close, close enough to touch her—might one day, when she gets big enough and outgrows the twin bed they share, because there have been rearrangements and Tammy and Constance in one of the smaller rooms, themselves in the other, and the Amita, Rose, and Nine Ball in the master—and Debbie can pretend for a fleeting, drowsy second that this is normal.

 

There is not much else to do except work to keep from pacing and worrying, although, in brief moments of relaxation when there are no noises to rattle them and the house is warm and happy, Nine Ball plays the piano and Constance makes telephone calls to random numbers hoping to make contact and Rose counts the cans down in the cellar and Amita plays solitaire and Tammy reads _What To Expect When You’re Expecting_.

 

And so Debbie grasps at the tatters of normality for her own sanity, rationalizes it that way, and kisses Lou awake with soft presses of her lips to Lou’s cheek, eyes closed but in pleasure for once, and feels Lou stir beside her.

 

 _What did our parents do to kill boredom before the internet?_ Debbie thinks, remembers the stupid, stupid joke Danny told her once. _I asked my twenty-six brothers and sisters, and they didn’t know either._

 

“Is the door locked,” Lou asks, voice thick with sleep and blue eyes opening slowly under her fringe that is _always_ falling in front her eyes, her very own blindfold, the others joke, and Debbie cups Lou’s jaw and kisses her, body already aware of Lou’s warmth and her scent and the touch of Lou’s hand to her stomach and then lower, heat stirring, and mumbles against her lips—

 

“Go lock it.”

 

Lou gets up, does so, turns and gives her a confident, easy smile that assures her nothing can get in, that it is only her and Lou and nothing else for now, like it could have been, before, and only then, Lou holding herself above her, waiting, does Debbie part her thighs and welcome Lou back to bed.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

They take turns gathering water, one person holding the bucket and another calling to them, voice letting them know here they are, and a third person at the door, to close it in case of an accident.

 

Once Tammy’s put it down for the day Debbie picks up _What To Expect When You’re Expecting_ , turns to the page she’s turned down the corner of and picks up. But the book falls from her hands with a frightened jolt when Constance shrieks from outside, piercing, the sound making her jump the way she’s started to at every loud noise since the problem broke out, and Debbie makes her way as fast as she can down the hall and the stairs and to the backdoor near the kitchen, careful not to slide on the linoleum.

 

“There was something in the fucking _well_ ,” Constance says, voice high and strangled as she rips off her blindfold, long black hair settling around her trembling shoulders, and Debbie stands with Amita and Nine before her, watches the most easy going of the housemate look at them with something in her eyes akin to terror. “I almost _touched_ it. It was there, and something was in the woods, too!”

 

 _Can the creatures stalk_ , Debbie wonders with a sinking feeling of her stomach. Not just some random occurrence, not randomly passing by. Was it waiting down there for them, to toy with them, or had it fallen it? Regardless, the creature left when Constance pulled the bucket up far enough, and now they only have two pails of water instead of their usually three but Debbie knows no one is going to ask Constance to do something they themselves couldn’t, to go back and get another bucket with a creature out there.

 

Constance’s voice has attracted attention, and Rose and Lou make their way into the kitchen now too, crowding around.

 

“It could have been a deer, right?” Rose asks nervously, and Debbie holds in a laugh, and ugly, scared one, holds it in for Rose and for herself because if Rose is right then there’s nothing to worry about, is there. “The noise in the woods?”

 

“Maybe,” Lou says evenly, giving nothing away about her personal opinion.

 

“Or it could have been a creature,” Constance says, still sitting on the floor, terror and stubbornness edging into her voice, and no matter how much she doesn’t want to Debbie knows deep down she agrees with Constance because Constance was _there_ and no matter what noise Constance heard after from the woods, deer don’t— _can’t_ —hide down wells.  

 

“Maybe,” Lou says again, turns to look at the windows in the home, long ago painted or masking-taped or draped over in the darkest, thickest blankets and paint they could find. “Just in case,” Lou says, evenly again because Debbie can feel that this is not another case of someone knocking a book over and spooking the others, something they’d laugh about together and brush off saying _can’t believe I did that_. “Just in case, let’s double check the locks and barricade the doors and windows.”

 

It’s a good idea, because it means more layers between them and whatever’s out there, and because it keeps them busy, keeps them from thinking about how close Constance came to touching one, how close Constance came to a blindfold slipping and the rest of them having to close the door behind her, to lock her out to die outside with the creatures.

 

There are lots of things she did before that she wouldn’t do now. Stay up all night working cons and tricking marks, getting a only few hours’ sleep before starting on the next one with Danny. Drink, on her off days, an amount that ensured she was as fun and easy to work and as good at her job with as Danny, not a meal or bottle of water in sight. And then sometimes skip meals, because elegant and slim-fitting dresses don’t come without work.

 

They are not good things to do to yourself. That, Debbie knows objectively. And now, five months pregnant, she does them still, regardless, because Constance can’t look at the buckets and everyone else eyes them warily despite their thirst and they’ve been sitting in a circle in the living room the entire night, backs together, Victor at their feet, too terrified to sleep.

 

Thirst has her tongue stick thick to the roof of her mouth as Debbie swallows. Stress is bad for the baby. Everything she feels, the baby feels. If she’s thirsty, the baby’s thirsty. The windows block out any light, but by glancing down at her watch, the only thing of Danny she’s got left, Debbie knows it’s only been one night. Even so, it’s common knowledge you can go exponentially longer without food than you can without water, and Debbie can see they’re all starting to feel it.

 

“You have to drink,” Lou says, stands and takes off her motorcycle helmet for the first time all night, and Debbie knows Lou’s talking to both her and Tammy. Lou reaches up, exhales, runs a hand through her hair as she lets the helmet drop to the carpet and says, “You can’t go days without water. Think about your baby.”

 

“I’m not drinking it,” Tammy replies, quick and stubborn, and Nine Ball, usually the quietest, the most easy going, even more so than Constance, speaks up.

 

“I’ll drink from the water. It’s a well, for fuck’s sake. Animals fall into wells all the time,” Nine says, as if it’s a matter of fact, _but not deer_ , Debbie thinks. _Not creatures_. “We’ve probably been drinking dead animal water this whole time. It was probably a squirrel.”

 

The well is deep and clean enough to allow them to have held onto their resources for rainier days, has kept them from needing to burn fuel every bucket to sterilize it. And now what? And can fire even keep the creatures away? Debbie thinks of George in the attic and the camcorder and doesn’t know.

 

Lou walks over to the bucket, picks up a glass off the counter, dips it in and brings it back up half-full. “Lock me in the cellar,” she says resolutely, and walks out of the kitchen and toward the cellar door, leaving no room for arguments.

 

Amita says something about _don’t be a hero_ and Rose is asking _but what about the cans_ but Debbie heaves herself up as fast as she can nowadays, goes to the kitchen and looks around and finds the stack of coffee filters Constance always leaves on the counter instead of putting back in the cabinet, grabs one and rushes to Lou.

 

“A filter,” Debbie says, handing it to her because there is nothing she can do to keep Lou from going through with this and so she might as well keep her safe, as much as she can, and Lou nods, takes it.

 

They lock the cellar door behind Lou, wait with bated breath, and breathe a collective sigh of relief when Lou calls out in a reasonable voice, when they open it again to find Lou’s glass empty and Lou grinning.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

“I’m going to go looking for dogs,” Lou says one morning as they sit around the dinner table, and Debbie nearly drops her mug.

 

“Lou, we don’t know the effect the creatures have on animals,” Constance says warily, and Debbie wants to say _yes, listen to Constance_ , because Victor is Constance’s dog and Constance worked at a shelter, before, and so Constance knows most out of them all. Dogs are smart, aren’t they? People are smart, too, and look what’s happened to them.

 

“I know,” Lou says, does sound a little worried because no one in their right mind spends more time outside than they absolutely need to. But she shrugs, repeats, “I know. But we can’t just sit still.”

 

“That means going out there,” Rose says nervously, pointing at the front door which they have not opened in a long, long time. “Not just out to the well in the backyard for water.”

 

“We’ll bring weapons,” Lou explains, and Debbie almost laughs because what do they have in here that would work against one of the creatures? A harden hoe, a couple of steak knives? And then, triumphantly, Lou says, “We’ll vote.”

 

Rose groans and slumps in her seat because it’s practically already decided. After spending months and months together in a small space, Debbie finds it’s almost impossible to hide what you’re thinking from anyone else. The best that can be done is that someone has the tact not to ask, to pretend not to see.

 

They take the vote then and there and when it’s tallied it’s exactly what Debbie fears on one hand and hopes for on the other. Lou will be going out, and at the last moment Constance agrees to join her, but without Victor.

 

“I’ll go with you,” Constance says. “But no way are you putting my dog in danger.”

 

And so the next day Debbie helps pack a duffel bag full of canned food, water bottles, and the sharpened ends of the stool they’ve cut off and shaved to a fire-hardened point, brings it to the living room and puts it down on the floor, gathered with the others.

 

Constance has on a bike helmet they found in the gardening shed on an expedition outside, blindfold already drawn over her eyes, and Lou wears her motorcycle helmet, visor flipped up for now.

 

“Here,” Debbie says, holds the long strap of the duffel bag out to Lou but doesn’t try to lift it, knows she probably shouldn’t have earlier at this stage of her pregnancy. Lou steps closer, picks it up, lays the strap over her shoulder and winks, and then pulls down the helmet’s visor, painted black.

 

 _Don’t go_ , Debbie almost says. _We need you. I need you_.

 

But she knows it will only make it harder if she does say it, and that Lou is her own person with her own drives and needs and that includes making sure they don’t live out the rest of their days pitifully in a boarded-up house, afraid.

 

“Good luck,” Debbie says instead, swallows the lump in her throat, and Lou’s helmet is on already so Lou takes her hand, squeezes it, and Debbie accepts that in lieu of a kiss.

 

“In twelve hours we’ll be back,” Lou says, a promise to them all, and once they’ve all closed their eyes they open the front door and let Lou and Constance slip out into the silence.

 

But twelve hours has come and come and slipped into the next day, and now Debbie sits at the kitchen table, wraps her hands around the warm mug of tea like that’ll bring back Lou sitting across the table from her, straddling a backwards chair and resting her arms crossed over the back of it and smiling like last time.

 

_Constance killed Lou. She saw a creature and dragged Lou to the river by her hair. She held her underwater until she drowned. Or they both saw something. In a house. They destroyed each other. Their ruined bodies lie on the floor in a stranger’s den. Or only Constance saw something. Constance tried to stop Lou, but Lou got away._

 

Her train of thought is interrupted by Rose and Nine Ball, arguing in the living room.

 

“I’m not convinced we should let them back in,” Rose says, accent light, and Debbie feels a wave of something wash over her, cold. How could she be so callous, Debbie wonders, when George and then Lou let them all in?

 

“Fuck you, Rose,” Debbie hears Nine Ball says. “If they come back, I’m letting them in.”

 

Cabin fever. Even she’s susceptible, and knows she can’t linger on the what ifs. But where Rose had been a worrier before like them all, something’s pushed her, and if Debbie knows anything about reading people, Rose is frayed thinner than anyone else.

 

“We need to start considering a future without them,” Rose continues, and Debbie lets go of her mug, gets up, wants to leave and put her hands over her ears and say _stop it stop it stop it_ , but Rose _keeps going_ , says, “The good news is that our stock will last longer.”

 

“Rose, I could kill you,” Amita says, voice harsh, and it sounds like she’s on the stairs, drawn down by the commotion and adding her voice to the din, and they’re going to come to blows, Debbie thinks in horror, stepping into the living room to see Rose and Nine Ball eyeing each other, knows even a woman pushed to the edge can get violent enough to cause serious damage.

 

But there is a commotion suddenly, Victor howling and something banging at the door, and Debbie takes another step into the living room, raises her voice and announces in disbelief, “Something’s at the door.”

 

It’s enough to get everyone else to pause, if just for a moment, and there’s the sound of Constance yelling, “Nine! It’s me! It’s me! I found dogs!”

 

There’s no question as to whether they’re going to open the door. Rose is the only one against it, and Nine Ball takes lead, tells everyone to close their eyes and heads for the door.

 

It turns out to be a sober victory—they close their eyes and let in Constance and now there is herself and Amita and Rose and Nine and Constance and Tammy and two huskies panting, nails scratching against the hardwood, and a box from which inside something coos, but no Lou.

 

“There was a shed,” Constance explains, lets go of the lengths of rope she’s used for leashes, and the huskies dart from her grip, run over to Victor and sniff and then rip through the house, exploring. “It’s where we got the birds, and the brown dog.”

 

Constance puts down the box of birds on the nearby end table, licks her lips like she’s not sure she should but continues.

 

“There was another dog there, two dogs total, but one darted and Lou went after it. I told her not to. I told her _not_ to, damn it.”

 

Debbie can almost see it, can see the determined look on Lou’s face even behind the painted visor of her helmet because she’s seen it so many times before, can see her listening and following that damned dog because she thinks they need just one more to make a difference. And now she won’t ever see Lou again, because who has gone out for so long and returned? No one.

 

“I waited there an entire day,” Constance promises. “Locked myself up in the shed blindfolded with these guys overnight, but she… she never came back. She just chased him around a corner and disappeared.”

 

Debbie feels the weight of nervous glances towards her, because they’ve lost a leader, yes, but it’s been clear from the start that Lou and Debbie have another sort of relationship.

 

 _Never found her way back_ , Debbie wants to open her mouth and correct Constance. _Just never found her way back_. It’s less permanent that never came back, leaves her room to think of Lou in her leather jacket and her motorcycle helmet out there with a dog to help her at least, trying to make her way back to the house, blind and disoriented. It’s possible.

 

_Do the things stalk? Can they follow you, waiting?_

 

Debbie takes to her room without a word, can’t stay downstairs with the others celebrating the dogs and the birds and Constance being back. Tammy brings her some food on a plate later, which she takes for the sake of her baby, eats, worn out from trying to cry quietly, and then puts it aside on the floor and sleeps.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She’s never been one to mope and nurses that hurt inside instead, where no one can see or at least no one pretends to see out of courtesy to her.

 

With Constance back and Lou gone and the days passing which mean Lou is _gone_ , there is no one to rally them, and Debbie thinks maybe Nine Ball might, but Nine Ball hangs back until Debbie is irritated enough with everyone—with the lack of clean dishes and empty buckets of water and the week’s blank ledger of how many cans they have left and that this is how she’s going to spend the rest of her life instead of basking in opulence in New York City—to walk around the house, to point to housemates and issue them chores.

 

She’s surprised they fall into step, since she’s only the second newest housemate. Is it egotistical to think they might be grateful for it?

 

She is a bad leader, Debbie decides, thinks about that instead of listening for any snaps or cracks from the woods as she feeds the birds in the box outside the front door, their alarm system. When she worked with Danny their egos kept each other in check. But leading people is something else. All she knows how to do is go her own way or work with Danny like she has since they were kids, and split the profits.

 

She goes about her day, gets the house back in shape and the count of cans tracked down, until one day she’s reading _What To Expect When You’re Expecting_ for the fifth time on the couch and jumps at the sudden sound of a knock on the door, curses herself for having any scrap of hope left when a voice that isn’t Lou’s calls out to them.

 

“Hello! I need to be let in. I have nowhere to go. Hello?”

 

“We’re not a fucking hostel, Debbie,” Amita says, sitting on the far end of the couch and playing some game with a pack of cards on the coffee table, and Debbie knows everyone else will filter in soon enough, ears always perked for something. And just as she imagined, the other women appear one by one, Rose and Nine and Tammy and Constance.

 

“I don’t like the sound of her voice,” Nine Ball says finally, and Debbie, closest to the door, sits up a bit, says loudly—

 

“Who are you?”

 

“Oh, thank God,” the voice says, relief clear. “My name is Daphne.”

 

Debbie turns, looks at the others, and can read the mixed reception on their faces. She has the number of cans left in her mind and the rooms are distributed just right among the other women and they’ve just got enough people to function but not so many that they drive each other up the wall. Is one more woman one too many?

 

“Vote?” Debbie asks, because if they have anything left to keep them safe it’s adherence to that, and they all nod. Debbie breathes out, because that takes the onus off her too, if anything with someone she’s vetted goes wrong.

 

“If something bad comes from this, if my life is put in danger because of a vote, I’m not going to stop to help you ladies on my way out of this house,” Rose says, voice tight and her vote clear, and with that go-ahead from the others Nine Ball brushes past Debbie, tells them all to shut their eyes and opens the door.

 

Once she’s checked and the door is locked behind her, Debbie almost wishes she could take it back, could veto all of them and tell Daphne to get the hell out because Daphne is tall and curvy and beautiful, brown hair soft and shiny like she’s washed it recently and with a purse on her shoulder, in nice slacks and a blouse and a blazer and no blindfold, and the way she looks around, happy but almost expectant, like she couldn’t have imagined any other outcome than them letting her in, makes that quick and jumpy thing in Debbie bristle.

 

“Oh,” Daphne says in slight surprise, mouth a tiny little O before she cracks her gum and smiles widely, sight landing on her belly, waves a hand at her in a limp wristed motion like she wants to touch but can’t be bothered to step closer and actually do it. “Jeez, you’re close, aren’t you?”

 

“Yes,” Debbie says guardedly, and leaves it at that.

 

“How did you find us?” Amita asks Daphne, and Debbie agrees, thinks _yes, tell us, how did you find us_ , because the ad is months and months old now and no one, not one single neighbor or passerby, has stumbled onto their house since the problem broke out.

 

“It’s a long story,” Daphne says with a theatrical flick of her head, pushes her long hair back over her shoulder and out of the way. “If you’d all like to sit down, I can recount it to you.” Daphne sits down regally on the couch, the spot she’s left when she’d gotten up, Debbie realizes, one leg crossed dainty over the other and her hands clasped on a knee as she smiles at them all. “Where I came from, they didn’t vote.”

 

And Daphne’s story is indeed long.

 

Debbie sits next to Tammy on the couch, tries not to let her knee brush Daphne’s as Daphne tells her story, tries not to ask question or think of the gaping holes Daphne’s story seems to have that no one else seems worried about, about her cousin that she walked away from over a difference in opinion, about a housemate, Frank, and his journal and his thesis that the creatures were not to be feared, about how Daphne survived outside so long and with no blindfold.

 

Just the right pressure in the right way, Debbie reminds herself, and she’ll know soon enough.

 

The day ends with them all around the kitchen table, crammed and listening to some amusing story Daphne the star is telling them all, but Debbie finds she has no appetite and would rather re-read _What To Expect When You’re Expecting._ She lingers each time on the part about complications, knows Tammy doesn’t want to read it but that she herself needs to. If anyone’s going to think about that and plan for it with Lou gone now, it’s her.

 

Debbie leaves and climbs the stairs and walks down the hall, is almost to her room when she hears someone behind her and turns on her heels and finds Tammy just at the top of the stairs, a hand on the banister and paused like startling Debbie has startled her.

 

“Do you mind if I sleep with you tonight?” Tammy asks, brow furrowed, and at least one person knows bullshit when she smells it, Debbie realizes with relief. Her door still locks, a happy memory. She locks it sometimes, not to keep the others out but just because she can, just because it’s the only place that’s hers alone, if only because Lou is gone.

 

“No,” Debbie agrees, because if the two of them are together then neither of them have to share with Daphne or even anyone else. “I don’t mind at all.”

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

The other housemates take turns between them fetching the buckets of water.

 

The baby sits heavy in her, kicks sometimes, and more often than not when Debbie tries to do something physical one of the other women will sit up suddenly, ask her to sit down and take it easy, and do it for her. The same happens for Tammy.

 

If she were having a normal pregnancy under normal circumstances in a normal hospital with doctors and nurses and 911 nearby, Debbie knows she’d tell them to stop babying her and that she can do things for herself. As it is, she lets them, hands things over and stops lifting things and lets the water schedule rotate between Rose, Amita, Constance, Nine Ball, and Daphne. They’ve escaped the reality of it so far because no one has been seriously hurt, but injury in any of their situations would be fatal.

 

Debbie finds herself hardly in a place to complain because they’re doing it to be nice, and she needs it, and because Daphne has been nothing but cordial to her and the others, and Rose fawns over her. But the closer she gets to her due date the more certain Debbie is that she does not want Daphne anywhere near her, and that she misses Lou terribly.

 

She is restless, wonders if this means the baby’s coming thought it doesn’t feel like it, not yet, and paces in the living room. From the kitchen there’s a faint light, Constance in there with Victor and her map, spread over the kitchen table once they’d finished eating and calculating another blind trip with the dogs, and on the couch are Rose and Daphne, talking. Tammy and Nine Ball and Amita must be upstairs.

 

Debbie paces, hands on her stomach, uses the excuse of exercise to eavesdrop.

 

Since Daphne’s come, she and Rose talk endlessly about nothing and everything, taking up the living room and the couch almost like it’s theirs to let people come or go into.

 

Rose jumps. Rose is flighty. Rose says whatever comes to her mouth. Everyone needs a friend, Debbie tries to tell herself, and Daphne is the only one in the house that seems to have taken a real shine to her. But something about the situation strikes her as odd, will not go away, and Debbie thinks of the way Daphne came to them in nice slacks and a blouse and a blazer and with a purse and hair washed and not _broken down_ like everyone else is and decides she has to do exactly what Daphne told them all that she did in such a similar situation.

 

It’s difficult to creep along at night almost nine months pregnant. Debbie pauses at each creak of the hardwood that comes from under her feet, pauses and waits and wonders with some empathy if this is what deer feel like, and only moves forward once she can hear that nothing in the house has stirred.

 

She makes her way slowly and carefully down the hall, pauses outside the door of Daphne and Rose and Amita’s room.

 

Debbie is sure every tortuous second that she’s in the room that she will wake them up—how can you miss her now, even asleep? But she hooks a finger through the strap of Daphne’s purse that sits just inside the barely-opened closet, slinks out of the room, and feels like she only starts breathing again then.

 

Personal possession and privacy are sacrosanct But she needs to read it. Daphne’s story doesn’t line up. Debbie wonders if Daphne’s cousin is lying in a street somewhere, hanged or throat slit or something even worse, because Daphne’s story _doesn’t_ line up.

 

She heads to the bathroom down the hall, another journey but one that hides the light from their room, throws suspicion off of her, and only when she’s closed the door and flicked on the lights and sat down on the closed toilet seat does Debbie take the purse and put it on what little lap she has left, held steady with one hand.

 

Inside there is lipstick. Gum. Receipts. A wallet. And a notebook.

 

 _Please don’t let this be what I think it is,_ Debbie thinks, feels tears burn hot at the corner of her eyes because _why_. She flips it open, has barely to glance at the writing to know that this is Frank’s journal, the man whose blind faith in the creatures caused him to tear down the covers from his housemates’ own windows and throw open their door.

 

It is Frank’s notebook. But why is the handwriting distinctly feminine—written normal left to write at first and then deeper into the notebook in spirals and backwards and up-and-down—and why does Daphne have it?

 

Because Frank sounded like a bad lie, and he was.  

 

 _What would Lou do_ , Debbie asks herself, closes the notebook and slips it back into Daphne’s purse.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She’s run cons. She’s stolen. She’s lied. She’s left her brother on the floor of his bathroom in his own blood, too afraid of things lurking outside and just out of her field of vision to bury him. What she doesn’t do, isn’t sure she has the guts to do, is take a kitchen knife to Daphne while she’s sleeping.

 

She's always preferred to work with a team, anyway.

 

“Frank’s journal is in Daphne’s purse,” Debbie says flatly instead one morning, leaves Daphne with enough rope to hang herself with, takes a bite of toast and lets what she’s just said settle.

 

Daphne looks at her sharply and yes, now it is especially rude to snoop, when they are all locked in here together for safety, but luckily the other women look past her faux pas, Amita turning to Daphne.

 

“Why do you have Frank’s journal?”

 

In the end Daphne’s purse is searched and her explanations do not convince the others, reason shining through the gaps in her story, and they vote, open the door, and tell Daphne to leave, which she does, lamenting theatrically about _what is this world coming to_ before they hear her walk away.

 

In the days that follow, Debbie can see that Rose takes it particularly hard. She sulks in the cellar, counting cans, Debbie can only guess, and refuses to come up and join them for dinner, and Debbie is too busy preparing for her child and guiding the others to worry about Rose and her cans.

 

“I was thinking of leaving tomorrow,” Constance says, sprawled in the recliner as Debbie paces. “Just a quick check around the neighborhood for more supplies, ‘cuz you look like you’re about to pop.”

 

“Thanks,” Debbie says with a roll of her eyes.

 

“No, it’s a good thing!” Constance says quickly, sitting up. “You’ve got, like, a sexy glow.”

 

“Please stop,” Debbie says, stops walking and shoots Constance a look, but she has to give it to the other woman—after a moment it makes her laugh, and that feels like something she hasn’t done in ages.

 

Constance does leave the next day along with Nine Ball, who wants to learn to navigate outside blindfolded and with the dogs now that Lou’s gone, although that part’s unsaid, and a little over twelve hours later they come back rattled but with duffel bags full of supplies—acetaminophen, towels they can cut up into strips, a butcher knife, more cans of food.

 

“For you, mama,” Nine Ball says as she digs the last couple of things out of her bag, holds out a pair of kid’s shoes tied together by the laces to make sure the pair stays together, Tammy already having received something for her baby, and Debbie takes them, puts the shoes down and hugs Nine Ball as best as she can.

 

But asides from ventures outdoors, there is nothing to do but wait as weeks drags by and Rose sulks in the cellar and Constance plans more trip with the dogs and Tammy reads and Amita calls phone numbers endlessly and Nine smokes the last of the weed she’d brought with her.

 

She’s going about her chores one day, washing dishes in a bucket and determined to stick to a schedule for her own sanity when Debbie feels a sudden and unexpected rush of lightheadedness move from her head to her feet that ends in a shiver, puts down the still-soapy plate on the sink nearby and knows that's not good.

 

Nine is smoking in the back of the kitchen and it’s not like they can go and open a window, and Debbie thinks maybe the overpowering smell is making her nauseous, lightheaded. She walks out of the kitchen, to the living room and to the couch, must say something about not feeling well but doesn’t remember saying it because now everyone is looking at her, eyes wide, and this must be it, Debbie thinks, steadying herself against the couch with one hand on the back of it and the other on her stomach, just before blacking out.

 

_We’re here._

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

Try as she might, she finds it difficult to block out the events of Boy and Girl’s birth.

 

Debbie doesn’t linger on that, alone now, and only cleans the house even though it feels like she’s tearing apart at the seam, buries Amita and Nine Ball and Tammy and Constance and Rose, wishes she could bury Daphne too but Daphne slipped away with the creature _unharmed_ , the crazy bitch, and Debbie keeps from thinking about that, too.

 

Her whole body screams at her to stop moving, which she does when she gets lightheaded or Boy and Girl begin to cry, but with the bodies gone she turns to cleaning the house, makes that her task along with going to the well for water and rationing out the canned food for herself and painting the car’s windows black, all blindfolded.

 

She ventures out, tries eight fruitless times and finds the speakers in the bar on the ninth but loses Victor in the process, faithful, loving Victor who did not deserve to die like that, and sobbing won’t get her anywhere now, Debbie knows from experience.

 

So she begins to train Boy and Girl.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

And that is how, on the water finally, four and a half years of convincing herself each morning that _today is the day_ , Girl listens from behind and Boy listens from up front, Girl telling her, “Mommy, there’s something behind us,” and Boy confirming it.

 

“Keep your blindfolds on,” Debbie says steadily, digs her paddle into the water and grits her teeth because her shoulder throbs with heat down to the bone from the wound and they’re near the trigger Rick had mentioned and the final fork in the river, a recording that repeats back a message letting her know they’re getting closer.

 

She’ll have to open her eyes, one way or another, after all these years doing everything she can not to. Either she opens them where Rick had explained to her she would need to, or they drift further, miss it, and she has to open them somewhere _new_ , unknown.

 

Debbie can’t bear to think about the second option, puts it from her mind as she rows. What if there’s nothing there, Debbie thinks instead, because this line of thought is easier, somehow, has less of a capacity to drive her mad and howl at the sky she can’t see because this is _unfair_. What if she’s sent them all to their deaths. And then—what if she’s been a terrible mother this entire time. What if she shouldn’t have kept Boy, when she first learned about him in her brother's bathroom and the pregnancy test in her hand, and spared him knowledge of this new world. What if she should have tipped the can of paint thinner, ignored Girl’s cries and followed Amita’s harsh advice, gone through with it.

 

What if she can’t open her eyes, when the time comes.

 

The boat becomes lodged on something once again, maybe a bank or a cluster of rocks or a water-logged trunk fallen into the river, as it has many times on their journey, where the feral dogs bit her, where the man on the boat howled at them, where the birds fell from the sky, and then suddenly Lou’s voice blares over a loudspeaker, repeating _...two seventy-three Shillingham... my name is Lou... I’m sure you understand the relief I feel at getting your answering machine_.

 

“We can’t stay out waiting for you,” Rick had explained over that serendipitous phone call, years ago on Boy and Girl's birth. “But we’ll leave a recording, something human you’ll recognize. You’ll know you’re near the fork. But you’ll have to open your eyes to take the second branch.”

 

She can’t see anything and so Debbie only tells Girl and Boy to duck down into the boat, sits up a bit and jabs the paddle all around the boat. She will find what is keeping them here, so help her god, because their story will not end here. She will not allow it.

 

“Mommy,” Girl whispers, and it doesn’t matter that she’s got the paddle wedged between the stump that’s pinning them between it and the shore, Debbie knows, because the thing that was behind them is among them now, because Boy and Girl are too well trained to make any more sound except for the final _mommy_ that Girl warned her with.

 

There’s the warmth of something near her—the same warmth she’s felt more than once before, lucky to be alive—and after a moment a slow, tentative tug on her blindfold which pulls it up what feels like half an inch.

 

Her shoulder hurts and her throat burns and her stomach turns and her head aches with it all and she is filthy and wet and tired and something is still following them, purposefully trying to drive home a final crack in the last of her resolve, removing her blindfold. But there is Girl and Boy and herself, who have paddled this far and listened so keenly, and through hard work and luck nothing has gotten them yet, and that’s better than nothing.

 

“No,” Debbie tells it, voice ringing loud in the silence and reaching up, tugging on the cloth, pulling it back down resolutely over her eyes which she keeps closed, too. “This is mine.”

 

Lou had told her once about a few of George’s theories. That maybe the creatures were just an anomaly, some energy thrust into their universe. Maybe they didn’t mean to hurt them. Debbie had told her succinctly what she thought of George’s theories, that she didn't give a fuck what they _intended_  to do or not, and Lou had laughed at that, the kind of laugh that made the delicate lines at the corner of her eyes stand out.

 

Girl and Boy are silent, frozen in the bottom of the boat where she’s pushed them, unmoving, and time seems to stop and draw out cruelly, Debbie coming up with theory after theory about how she’ll finally meet her end, before the warmth disappears with only the sound of something slipping into the water.

 

The dogs and the man and the birds have long gone and so now has this creature, and now there is only the lap of water against their boat and, further downstream, the sound of it picking up. They’ve stayed still long enough now not to have triggered the microphone again.

 

“Boy?” Debbie breathes, and this is what she’s trained them their entire lives to do, for better or worse, and Boy understands the gravity, voice shaking as he listens and then replies.

 

“It’s leaving us, Mommy.”

 

“Are you certain? Are you absolutely sure?”

 

“Yes, Mommy.”

 

Debbie presses against the end of the paddle, ignores the throb of pain from her shoulder and uses her weight and dislodges the boat from where it’s wedged, feels it float free and then pick up a titch of speed, carried by the current. The split is coming up, Debbie knows. Quarter-mile.

 

“Girl?” she asks, because she's going to have to do it soon, clutches the paddle in one hand and feels the water carry they a little faster, a little rougher now.

 

“It’s behind us, Mommy.”

 

And so Debbie touches her blindfold, raises it up with one hand and opens her eyes just long enough to steer them down the split of the river, tugs the thick black cloth back on securely before paddling with whatever energy she has left.

 

There’s a bang like she expects, Rick having mentioned a fence, and then the boat jolting to a stop, nearly sending them all into the water, but they manage to stay in, Debbie reaching out, feeling for Girl and Boy and squeezing down that hope as she shouts, “We’re here!” over and over until her throat hurts and something is touching her shoulder and she swings out with the paddle, hard, feels it catch and wrenched from her grip and hears her name _Debbie Debbie it’s me Debbie it’s me_.

 

Debbie wonders if maybe she did catch a glimpse of a creature, wonders if she’s going mad because it is Lou’s voice and Lou’s hand that clasps her wrists, helping her blindly from the boat, and Lou’s body she feels against herself and Lou’s scent as Lou embraces her and Debbie turns her head against her, buries her face against her neck, eyes still closed but this time in relief.

 

 

 

 

 

-

 

 

 

 

 

She lies in bed with Lou, like she did almost five years ago now, except Girl and Boy are between them, curled between the parentheses of their bodies.

 

The safe place is too much to take in at once, and Rick must know this because he’d like to take her on a tour tomorrow, he explains, and Debbie nods, exhausted, ushers Boy and Girl before her down the brightly lit hallway and only visits the infirmary and has her shoulder cleaned and bandaged up before Lou shows them her room.

 

“That stupid dog,” Lou says, almost laughing, and Debbie sighs, shakes her head, knows even though those four and a half years were hard and lonely that it was better for Lou to have been gone, to have been found by the safe place by some stroke of luck, to be waiting here for her rather than buried with the others at two seventy-three Shillingham Lane.

 

Lou tells Debbie her story, of following the dog out of sheer stubbornness, to help them all, and of getting lost, of trying to coordinate herself and wandering miles trying to get back, before literally running into someone from the safe place doing a sweep for survivors, the house on Shillingham almost impossible to get back to and its phone number unknown.

_Never found her way back._

 

“What are their names?” Lou asks, and Debbie has thought of Lou every day, thought of how Lou would like to know how Girl and Boy were coming along, whether they were healthy and happy. Lou is a good mother, Debbie knows, knows this from what little of Robin Lou has told her about and the way Lou’s got her hand on Girl’s shoulder, comforting.

 

Debbie is glad Lou spares her any questions, skips straight to this one easy answer that means Debbie can leave the house on Shellingham behind for good, in the past where it belongs now.

 

Almost.

 

“Tammy,” Debbie says, touching Girl lightly on the arm as she sleeps, and like years ago in the cellar it’s all she has to say for Lou to understand, to feel Lou’s arm move and settle around her shoulder, around them all, pulling them close, and the children are small enough that they curl together and Debbie tilts her head, feels Lou’s forehead presses against hers, breathing even and deep.

 

Boy and Girl are gone and in their place, safe, is her son and her daughter, now that she can afford them that, and Debbie tries out the name on her tongue, _Tammy_ , before she touches the top of her son's head, the dark curling hair that couldn’t be more different from the blonde fringe that obstructs her view of Lou now, knows as certainly as she did for her daughter and says—

 

“And Lou.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
